


Ragnarok

by orphan_account



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Based on Norse mythology, Child Death, Cultural Differences, Dark and bitter Fen'Harel, Elvhen Pantheon, F/M, Rites of Passage, Sacrificial rites, Shaman Trevelyan, Slavery, Worldbuilding, broken world, death everywhere, mentions of cannibalism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-06
Updated: 2015-10-10
Packaged: 2018-04-25 05:01:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,968
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4947682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another world Fen’harel the Betrayer is bound and imprisoned for his attempted coup, with his power scattered to the edges of the world. </p>
<p>Fala, previously part of a wandering tribe until Alamarri raiders separate her from them, finds a crumbling place of sanctuary in the Frostback Mountains.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. the woman-shaman and the boy

**Author's Note:**

> i was like huh fenrisulfr is a giant wolf, fen’harel is a giant wolf, they kinda both cause the end of a world. and i’m sort of curious about the idea of solas meeting a wholly different type of magic. so sure. let’s go with shaman from a “savage tribe” and one of my favorite movies/books is clan of the cave bear. yeah. let’s just mash all of that together. go team.

 

She was not going to survive.

 

A woman alone, even a shaman-woman, would have difficulty surviving in this cold. The winds were harsh and killed whatever fires she managed to coax to life. Most of the food her people had carried had been lost to the raiders, Alamarri who wandered lands beyond their own to escape the surge of qunari and elvhen. Her leathers were tattered, torn from the raiders and their brutish attacks. Most of the women of her tribe had not escaped unmarred and she had been no exception. It was not a rare occurrence. But Alamarri men had carried off most of the children and killed the men, took what women they could and headed northward towards the coast.

 

She had nearly been carried off until she had managed to turn herself into a small white fox and disappear into the snowdrifts. She had little enough strength to escape herself. She could not help her people save for one of the boys, nearly five, who cried and wept and clung too tightly to her body. The raiders had taken his mother, in all the ways they could and had left him to die.

 

Her furs were not enough for the both of them. She looked over at the boy as he shivered beside the meager fire that had yet to die. She had managed to block the mouth of the cave with a shaky barrier, a spell stolen from a Tevinter magister when she had been younger.

 

The boy shivered and she maneuvered so she was curled around him. Opening the front of her robe beneath her furs so her bare skin showed, she tucked him against her chest and closed the furs around him. He was freezing. Not in the way she was cold, but if she concentrated enough, she could feel the cold seeping into his little body like a disease. Her eyes shut briefly, tightly. His body couldn’t take much more.

 

He turned so his face pressed into her skin and she looked down into the furs to see him crying and whimpering for his mother.

 

It was his third day without food, but her fourth. Their people were hardy and used to hardship but the cold was making things near impossible. She had given the boy the grain and elfroot cakes she had stored away in a small pouch. There was at least no limit on water although the snow had to be melted, and the only available materials for flame were the sparse trees and her own magic.

 

She looked into the fire, watched it flicker and fade until only the embers burned before she reached out and lit it anew, adding more wood to the fire. She settled around Matwau and curled up for more rest. She would scout again when she woke, although her body ached and groaned at even the thought of it.

 

They were going to die if she did not do _something_.

  
  
  


The roar of a bear startled her awake.

 

Her furs and robe fell open when she sat up hastily to grab her spear and the boy rolled to his side and woke with a small cry from the sudden rush of cold. She hissed in a breath and wrapped her robe around her securely. Her breath clouded in front of her and she noticed that the fire had died again. Her barrier flickered weakly. She tried to push more strength in it and only felt herself drawing upon her dregs. She had nothing else left to give.

 

The boy, Matwau, sniffled and began to cry softly. She reached over and with a firm hand pinched his lips closed and shushed him. His large eyes looked up at her. She gave him a pleading gaze. He crawled behind her, bunching under the furs that covered her body.

 

The bear roared again. Fala tensed. It sounded closer.

 

An idea flickered to life in her. A small spark. She shrugged her outer furs off her shoulders and wrapped the boy in them. She tucked them tightly into his and herded him to the very back of the cave. “Quiet. We must be quiet now.” She whispered. He nodded fearfully.

 

She left the safety of the smoldering embers behind and tapped on the barrier with the tip of her spear thoughtfully. A bear would mean meat. It would mean bone powder for potions. It could also mean her death if she faced it as weak as she was with only her spear. She chanced a glance at Matwau who shivered even beneath all the furs. His eyes had taken to be unfocused and glazed and to even get him to understand her words was difficult.

 

If she let the bear pass through, there was no telling when there would be more food. She would have to brave the bear and the wind. She knelt on the ground and checked the sharpness of her spear and the sturdiness of its wrappings. The bear would not die easily. She had to make sure she didn’t let sloppiness keep her fighting too long or the bear would simply need to outlast her. If it was here, chances were it was as starved as they.

 

“Matwau.” She called. The boy met her gaze, swaying in place. “Stay here. Don’t come out. I will be back.” She hesitated, but then continued. “I promise.”

 

The boy urgently, awkwardly signed to her. _Don’t leave. Stay. Don’t leave. Stay. Please stay. Fala._

 

With a pang, she understood the clumsy signing. He wasn't old enough to have mastered it, and his body was too weak to put forth more effort. “I will come back, I promise Matwau. And we will leave this place.” _Or I will die and be eaten, and you will die in this cave alone in the dark._ She stood and the barrier’s curtain fell away and came up again after she passed the cave’s mouth.

 

The cold pierced her mercilessly and it staggered her for a moment before she found her footing again. Narrowing her eyes against the wind, she searched for the location of where the sound had originated.

 

Far ahead she saw the brown shape lumbering along clumsily. It dragged a lame back leg behind it, twisted at an odd angle. It had fallen somewhere or had gotten caught in a trap. Fala’s hopes raised. If it was injured she had a better chance of killing the beast. Not that the chance of failure was no longer possible - it looked like it outweighed her at least thrice over and those claws were still sharp. But it looked haggard and starving, it looked weak.

 

She hefted her spear and began to follow it.

 

Only a quarter of a mile off and she felt as if she were going to freeze in place. The bear, finally, tired and leaned against the twisted trees that grew in the mountains here. It groaned to itself in pain. The blood tracks from its legs had left spots to track it.

 

Fala hadn’t heard any other bears or wolves but she didn’t want to wait until she had to deal with competition. She could wait until it bled out since the cold made it sluggish but there was the matter that if this bear was here, the likelihood of other creatures braving the mountains was high. The Avvar and the elvhen had been squabbling along the mountain edges before, until the combined forces of the Dalish elves and Chasind had driven them off from their lands. Animals had been displaced after that, fleeing the battles and fires. There could be other creatures lingering, just as weak and desperate as she. 

 

She might not have another such opportunity.

 

With a savage movement, she tore the thin skin at her wrist with her teeth. She had no other power to draw on. She spat her blood on the obsidian spear tip and watched as it heated. The metal hissed and smoked.

 

Exhaling swiftly, she lifted the spear over her shoulder, tip pointed high at an angle. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. She felt the weight of the spear mold comfortably to her side and, keeping her eye on the neck of the bear, she let the spear fly. She didn’t have enough strength for the spear to completely pierce through the bear’s thick neck but her aim was true.

 

It roared and staggered upright, lashing out and tossing its head until it spotted her. Even if it had poor eyesight, it could smell her blood. It snarled again and began to climb to her. Her spear bobbed in its neck and with a snap, the wooden staff collided with an outcropping of rock and broke. The bear’s strides didn’t even hesitate as the break tugged on the spear blade lodged in its neck.

 

Fala’s eyes widened and she scrambled for the knife at her belt. “ _Tokan't_.” She cursed at the bear. The obsidian blade in its neck shattered.

 

The spark was small but it caught on the bear’s fur and its natural oils well. It was enough for the animal to halt its charge and flail in confusion. The smell of burning hide and skin came and went with the pushing winds. Fala waited until the animal fell to its side, roaring with agony before she approached it.

 

“ _Ti anzarna_.” And drove the curved knife beneath its jaw. The bear silenced. The burning curse died the moment the bear did. Hovering over the skull of the beast, she whispered apologies for its death and how it died and thanked it for dying so she and Matwau could live.

 

She bit her wrist again, drawing half circles on her wrists and thighs with the blood. She dotted the inside of her palms with a finger and stroked the tops of her feet. Marks that would last a small while so she could carry the bear whole. She would need to repaint herself before she reached the cave at least twice, but at least she had motive now to do it.

 

Sliding her knife away into her leather belt, she gripped the bear by its front paws and dragged it over her back. The weight seemed as if she were carrying a child. The blood marks flared with light and Fala immediately started walking.

 

She could have chosen to skin the bear and take the choice cuts and leave what else for the wilderness but she didn’t want to chance another predator smelling all the blood and burnt fur. And after what she went through to get to the bear, she was of little mind to share her kill. This meat belonged to Matwau and herself.

 

She did end up having to paint herself three more times in order to haul the bear to the cave but she made it and nearly collapsed from her efforts. The barrier had died completely in her absence. Shrugging the bear off her, she called out to Matwau.

 

The boy sleepily raised his head from his nest of furs. Upon seeing her, he let out a squeal and tripped over himself to hug her legs. She kept her bloodied hands from him but crooned softly. “Hush, hush Matwau. I said I would be back.” She gestured to the bear. “And we can eat now.”

 

Matwau’s eyes widened upon seeing the animal. “You killed it? By yourself?”

 

She grinned, exhaustion beginning to creep up on her. “I’m a shaman.” She said by way of explanation. “Bring me the flat stone in the back. The one I used to heat the cakes on.”

 

She slumped down and left the barrier alone for now. The winds had started to die down on the way back. She began the laborious process of breaking the bear down, gutting it and skinning it. It was a shame to waste so much of it, but she wouldn’t be able to move all of the animal. She threw away nearly all the organs and most of its hide, burying it all in a pit she dug a ways away from the cave. Still. Her labors had rewarded her with precious fat, meat and bone she was still able to gather in a sack from its own hide.

 

Matwau had settled the flat rock beside the dead fire.

 

Reopening the wound on her wrist, she dripped the blood into the fire stack and breathed on it. She would never have used blood commands so much if she didn’t know when she would be eating next. But there was little choice, and now, they would have meat for days.

 

The rock absorbed the heat quickly and sizzled when she flicked melting snow at it. Matwau looked on with more focus than she had seen in him in days. Taking cuts from the bear’s side, she flung strips of meat on the rock. She packed snow into the hide and left it near the entrance where it was cooler.

 

Matwau ate well, juice running down his chin as he stuffed himself enough to fill a grown man. She ate more than her share, feeling power run through her body again and the ever present exhaustion lift.

 

They would stay only one more night here, but after that they would need to move. They had to find somewhere else.

 

Matwau fell asleep nearly immediately afterward, curling up by the now healthy fire. Fala recast a barrier over the mouth of the cave. The smell of blood and gore would bring animals if there were any, and drive away any prey. She couldn't prevent them from following the smell, but she could keep them out.

 

She wound a long uninterrupted tendon taken from the bear around the small bones from its front paws and its claws. She breathed ice over it and let it heat by the fire before repeating the process until the tendon had dried into a tough leather like material. She began to hum in front of the fire, using the bone rattle to keep the steady rhythm she had been taught since she had been just a little girl learning how to walk.

 

She had no embrium blooms with her, but the trance of the chant would at least ease a spirit enough to speak with her. So she hoped. Shaman Gurul had communed with spirits using blood rites to make a door and open it. Her own teacher had advised her against using it in such a way since it could lead to possession. Not irreversible, but certainly inconvenient and with no other shaman with her to lead the hypothetical spirit from her body, it would make it rather permanent.

 

Besides, she had less experience in spirit communication than Gurul. She could manage to attract a curious wisp, or a spirit of guidance at least for information on where exactly in the mountains she was. Perhaps there was a village somewhere. Her tribe had never skirted from their well worn mountain pass, deeming the Frostbacks too dangerous to chance. She was well away from any path they had ever used.

 

If Gurul were here, he would have spoken an incantation into the fire and painted himself in the bear’s blood. A dark spirit or a light spirit would have answered such a powerful call, drawn to the life he would have exuded. Gurul, who had been cleaved near in half by an Alamarri brute while his chant of protection had died on his lips.

 

She ignored the twinge spreading into an ache across her chest, like lengths of rope tightening on her, and continued her chanting. Simple words with roots deep in the base of their language, words that held history and power.

 

She chanted well into the night before falling asleep to the sound of faraway voices that echoed from the beyond to the living world.

 

_A fraction of a spirit finds its way to her, a small bright glow of curiosity and sympathy. A vision of a giant fortress is shared with her. It beckons her from the cave and into the snow._

_It leads her to a place not far and taps gently. The illusion comes apart and instead of a cave that could barely allow a child to crawl into, it becomes a tall stone door. The door is carved with a language Fala nearly recognizes and then it groans and opens wide like a great maw. The wisp glides in and Fala follows, fingers tracing the runes and carvings in the tunnel that leads down, down, down to the cold damp. The wisp leaves her when she pushes the next door open and in it she sees chains and shackles._

_A beast slumbers beneath the fortress, great and terrible. A forest god? But he is chained and bound, chains linking around his muzzle. He does not move._

_Fala peers closer. Her breath, even here in the dreaming world, forms clouds before her. It is so cold here. Cold enough to strip her flesh and bare her bones._

_Six red eyes open and stare at her and it speaks in a deep resounding voice that shakes her from her dream._

 

Fala reached out and gripped Matwau's small body close to her beneath the furs. He shivered.

 

Gasping, Fala tried to reach out to the wisp, anything that would hear her, but there was only silence. The spirits, those that she had managed to call to her, have all fled. She clutched Matwau to her tight enough that he grumbled in his sleep, jabbing an elbow into her ribs. She pressed her face to the crown of his head.

 

What would be strong enough to bind a forest god? And why was it bound? She had never heard of a god living in the Frostbacks, never have her people ever had a god that guarded and presided over these mountains. It had always been a place imbued with its own magics that gods had little to do with.

 

But he was a wolf. A wolf forest god meant luck for hunters, a guardian from the creatures of the night and a protector of families. He was far from any notable forest. She had no recollection of a six eyed god, wolf or otherwise. And his speech was muddled, either from her beyond-dream or from the ropes that bound his snout, but it was no language she spoke. Perhaps god-speech was different.

 

The wisp was wrong, though. She and Matwau could not stay in the fortress that held the forest god prisoner. No telling what kind of warden such a prison would have. None that would take kindly to their intrusion, she was sure. But - she looked down at Matwau and his small form huddled against her. But if she couldn't find something of more permanence, then she and Matwau would be out in the elements. The Frostbacks had been kind thus far, but Fala was more than aware of the tempestuous nature of the mountains.

 

She looked out towards the mouth of the cave where spatters of blood from the bear were still visible. The falling snow was still powdery, but it was rapidly covering the tracks.

 

They would die without a doubt, out here. But where the forest god was - they only _might_ die. Perhaps the jailers would pity them. Matwau was only a child, and she was only a woman.

 

She kept her arms looped around Matwau and never took her eyes off of the cave entrance. The snow continued to fall.


	2. history of the world

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the great fortress of Tarasy’lan Te’las, the great Dread Wolf opened his eyes. Someone was knocking on the entrance to his home.

Morning came and with it, the mountain grew weary of hosting Fala and Matwau. Thunder had rumbled in the middle of the night and the winds had picked up, sending angry flurries of snowfall to knock heated at her barrier. Matwau, awoken by the thunder, had cried for his mother for nearly an hour, fisting his little hands in her furs and screaming until he was nearly purple in the face. Fala had hushed him best as she could until she had given up and sang him an old lullaby, sending pulses of healing magic through it. He had fallen into a deep, dreamers sleep while she had folded her legs to sit up and stare into the darkness.

 

The spiritual forces around the mountain had changed during the night, after the wisp had shown her the fortress and the creature beneath it. Perhaps he, she, it was a mountain god locked away from his own kingdom. It was as if the mountain was aware of her tiny existence and wished her gone.

 

She felt much the same in all honesty.

 

The Frostbacks were a strange place for her people. Nearing the border of Orlais, the human empire that tried so hard to be like the elvhen empire and distinguish itself from Tevinter, land of slaves and dark rituals, but still touching upon the lands of her ancestors until the Avvar drove them into fractured states of nomadism. Then the Avvar took the lands they had left. The Chasind and Dalish elves fought the Avvar back for land that belonged to none of them. The Lost Tribes remained homeless and that which they had built over time crumbled or was repurposed.

 

The Frostbacks remained the spine in such a strange body of land. A strange place with stranger tidings.

 

Her robe fell open in the face of the heat of the fire. Nakedness was a natural thing and Matwau was not only asleep, he was a child. Such things like the natural body, spirits, lands and gods were the horrific questions Orlais banned and the disdainful considerations of Tevinter. People who came from the earth, water, stone, understood the natural and spiritual intricacies of the world they lived in. Orlais wanted to rise above it, contain or ignore it. Tevinter wished to rule it. The qunari embraced the natural order but despised the spiritual world. The elvhen hated all others beyond their own empire. The Chasind and Dalish - her wandering people were not family to them, but were acquaintances who understood one another.

 

Her teacher, an old woman whose hips had sagged after bearing their old chieftain six children with her breasts long as her tooth, had spoken of a time when the world was not so fractured. “There had been pieces, but the pieces had made a whole. Once, the elvhen empire had stretched across all the lands. Then the Old Gods took it from them. Their own gods, of sky and forest and mountain and stone, had only defended their homes but the Old Gods ate them. The elvhen pantheon killed them.

 

“The pantheon's slaves turned on them during the war of gods. They rejected their own people and fled their lands. They looked different from the elvhen. Their first home had been the home they had wrested from the pantheon, fought in blood and tears, a long hard war they eventually won. The Dalish elves had managed to overthrow their gods, in that one instance.

 

“Then Orlesians came. From the place called Orlais. They had told them that land was theirs because it had technically always been part of the Orlesian Empire. They fought the Dalish and another war began. Orlais claimed that the Maker granted them that land. The Dalish were killed, executed and banished from their homes. The Elvhen empire had laughed at their misery but the Dalish found themselves in the Kocari Wilds and the further uncharted lands. The Chasind grudgingly accepted them as neighbors. A good thing, because immediately after, Tevinter marched against the wildlings of Ferelden. The Dalish were not keen to lose another home. They fought, the Chasind fought, the Avvar fought, and her own people the Lost Tribes fought. Tevinter was beaten back. The Avvar and the Lost Tribes were pushed out. The Chasind and the Dalish became siblings, ever near one another, and the Wilds belonged to their kind since.

 

“Then, three hundred years ago, dragons without wings came to shore on an island far from Ferelden. They hated Tevinter. They hated the elvhen empire. They hated Orlais. They pitied, and in the same breath admired, the wild tribes of Ferelden.

 

"Lost Tribes they call us. We had our castles and villages. Ruins now. We were a whole people once. Like the elvhen. Now, we are scattered. The Old Gods ate ours and with their blood, Tevinter became powerful enough to take some of the elvhen empire. Then Orlais drove the Dalish from their home. There was not enough room for us, the Chasind and them. The Chasind chose them and drove us from our homes. And the Avvar took the rest. We are not forsaken either but we are dying, child. But it is slow. All things must die. But we have made slow death an art." She had said it over a low flame. The history of the world told with fermented milk and honey on her breath and the old woman had looked no more wretched for it. Fala had listened with horror on her face. The world had always been broken, long before she had ever come in to it squalling.

 

Fala leaned forward, stretching her back and resting her forehead on the rock floor. She was a Lost One, not forsaken. But she felt as if she was. No tribe. No path. No god. No _clue_.

 

She thought of the god locked and imprisoned beneath that great fortress. Even a prisoner - god was better than none at all. But there was no choice. She was beginning to doubt she ever had one.

 

They would have to brave the fortress. She didn't think anything else lived in it besides its prisoner. Perhaps one of their physical gods had been captured by elvhen forces long ago and this was where they had deigned to let him rot.

 

The gods of her people were not like the Maker they worshipped in Orlais and parts of the Free Marches, nor like the songs of the Old Gods and certainly nothing like the elvhen pantheon. Her gods knew of their devotees, answered their prayers and gave answers - once. Since the war of the gods, they had grown quiet. Not as absent as rumors whispered the Maker was, but the lands of which the gods had roamed noticed their absence.

 

But the creature, he looked as if he was one of her gods. If she met him, freed him, prayed to him - perhaps he could save them. Or at least give her guidance. Her gods were perhaps not the most powerful, but they had never been cruel. They offered guidance without any payment but a question.

 

Fala sat up and rested a flat palm on the back of Matwau who murmured in his sleep. She would see them through this. She was a woman fully grown, a shaman who had passed her rites and she was now the mother to Matwau. She would not falter in this.

 

She waited until Matwau roused before she heated the flat stone and filled him with meat. He smiled at her with his face smeared in grease. She laughed and wiped his face with snow. Clucking her tongue she leaned close. "Matwau. Matwau, listen to me. Until your mother finds us, I am your tribe-mother now." She drummed her fingers on her robed chest. Matwau nodded, looking mildly distressed but accepting. "I think I have found us a home."

 

Matwau’s eyes widened. "A tribe?"

 

She bit her lip. "No. Camp. A long-while camp."

 

Matwau’s excitement died down but he hopefully asked, "It is not a cave is it?"

 

Fala laughed and hugged Matwau, a small living warmth needing affection, to her. "No. It has walls and rooms and a roof." _And a god_.

 

Memory was enough to guide her back to the secret entrance the wisp had shown but confronted with the illusion, she was momentarily stumped on how to enter without raising defenses. She tapped. She knocked. She called out a greeting in the languages she knew. She sang.

 

Behind her, Matwau shivered and then asked doubtfully, "Are you sure this is where our camp will be?"

 

She waved a hand at him, shushing him. All the wisp had done was tap the illusion gently. But she had not been paying particular attention to how it had done it or if it had done it in a specific spot.

 

Hissing out a frustrated breath she sank into a deep crouch. Her fingertips brushed the snow. The wind blew around them bitterly. Matwau patted her shoulder with a small hand. "Maybe our new home is not ready for us yet?" Then, "Can we go back to the cave? I'm tired." Fala heaved a great sigh.

 

"To the cave with you then. I will come back here and try to open the door."

 

She walked Matwau back to the cave, erected a barrier and wards, and walked to the entrance and crouched before it again.

 

She glared at it. And then thought back to Matwau's words. Perhaps she had woken the god and he was not letting her open the door? She bit her tongue. She could enter the dreaming world and seek him out, perhaps ask how to open the door.

 

She pressed on the barrier, leaned against it and listened to the heartbeat it claimed. The soft pulses were easier to feel than they were to hear. It was not inclined to hurt her, perhaps because in the land of dreaming she had managed to slip inside. She pressed her mouth to it and whispered in a reverent tone, “Please let me in, I have nowhere else.”

 

The barrier pulsed but did nothing else. Fala cursed.

  
  
  
  
In the great fortress of Tarasy’lan Te’las, the great Dread Wolf opened his eyes. Someone was knocking on the entrance to his home. 

**Author's Note:**

> so. worldbuilding. it's intense but i'm starting to enjoy the exercise, especially since i'm working out the other chapters for my other story. 
> 
> anyway. worldbuilding needs a bit of language so just gonna post glossary bits here (not even gonna try to tolkien it, ijs) 
> 
> burn/fire/heat - tokan’t  
> i’m sorry/forgive my transgressions (formal) - ti (I/myself/me) anzarna (to display sorrow)  
> informal version - t’anzar


End file.
